Christopher Busby - Conflicts With Other Low-Dose Radiation Researchers

Conflicts With Other Low-Dose Radiation Researchers

Busby is the author of two self-published books on cancer incidence in Wales, Wings of Death and Wolves of Water; the latter was lauded in a review published by a group that "aims to provide a safe forum for the critical and open minded discussion of ideas that go beyond conventional paradigms in science, medicine and philosophy challenge the adequacy of "scientific materialism" as an exclusive basis for knowledge and values." According to the reviewer, described as a former research immunologist, "Busby dissects the workings of the government advisory establishment, the biased science and institutional cover-ups of the causes of cancer and other illnesses".

The books were criticised in the Journal of Radiological Protection as "erroneous in consequence of various mistakes". According to Richard Wakeford, the editor-in-chief of the journal, a fellow CERRIE committee member representing the nuclear industry, and a specialist in the health effects of low-dose radiation (formerly with British Nuclear Fuels)

... much of Chris Busby's work is self-published and difficult to access; he seems mainly to avoid publication in the recognised scientific literature, which presents difficulties for a proper review of the evidence underlying his conclusions.".

Busby served on the UK Government's Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE), which operated between 2001 and 2004, and included medical professionals, scientists, delegates from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and Richard Wakeford representing the nuclear industry. Busby ultimately disagreed with the committee's conclusions and published a "minority report" with another committee member from LLRC On the LLRC website page selling the minority report, it's claimed (without citation) that north Sweden cancer rates have increased by 40% since Chernobyl. A doctoral dissertation from 2007 was reported as saying that the area "has shown a small but statistically significant increase in the incidence of cancer."

Busby has criticized other researchers studying health effects from low-dose radiation, for being "stupid" and "ignorant", and in particular Prof. Wade Allison (emeritus) of Oxford who had quoted a UN report saying that only 28 people have died as of 2005 from radiation releases at Chernobyl and who has said there is an "over-reaction" to low-dose radiation. In particular, he seems to have taken exception to Allison on philosophical grounds:

I have chosen to pitch into him since he epitomises and crystallises for us the arguments of the stupid physicist. In this he has done us a favour, since he is really easy to shoot down. All the arguments are in one place. Stupid physicists? Make no mistake, physicists are stupid. They make themselves stupid by a kind of religious belief in mathematical modelling. The old Bertie Russell logical positivist trap.

Busby went on to say, claiming support from a New York Academy of Sciences publication titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, that "more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result of Chernobyl." The report was in actuality only a translation of a Russian book not put under peer review by NYAS. Contrary to the UN report cited by Allison, it claims several hundred thousand deaths and projects the number to go higher, with some support from mathematical modeling. He can be equivocal about modelling—in earlier comments on BBC, he'd claimed "significant" plutonium releases from Fukushima detected far north of the reactor complex, supposedly established in part through the use of "a very advanced, sophisticated, computer air-flow model."

Antone Brooks (recently retired as the Technical Research Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Low Dose Radiation Research Program) has also had differences with Busby.